Greif GF. The Tragedy of the Self. Individual and Social Disintegration Viewed Through the Self Psychology of Heinz Kohut. University Press of America, 2000, xiv + 132pp.

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Notes

The most important among them wrote that these multiple selves are “much more than (cognitive) representations of self; rather, they are each versions, complete functional units with a belief system, affective organization, agentic intentionality, and developmental history” (Mitchell, 2000, p. 63).

One example of the fact that he is not credited often enough for these breakthroughs is the Symposium “The Multiplicity of Self and Analytic Technique,” where he is almost left unmentioned (see Pizer, 1996).

For a very inspiring attempt see Teicholz, 2000.

Unfortunately the author did not discuss the appropriateness of Kohut's quite frequent use of analogies between depth psychology and sociology of large groups as a scientific methodology, and the opinion of a sociologist would be very useful here.

The references show that the author used literally everything Kohut had ever written, but also that he used little else: apart from Kohut and Freud one does not find any references to psychoanalytic literature (be it pre‐ or post‐Kohutian, so to say), nor too much of any other literature.

The author prefers to use the term “Tragic Self,” or uses these term interchangeably. The reasons for that are partly obscure, but they are surely unjustified Kohut never equaled self with the totality of psyche (as, for instance, Jung did) and claimed that even the nuclear self is not necessarily the center of personality.